ACO Corp Executive Summary
For Ascension Center Organization and Ascension Center Network of Organizers
ACO Corp is an event planning company specializing in corporate customers.
ACO will offer two types of services; retreat training services as well as product launch event planning.
The retreat training services will be either leadership development training or team skills training.
For both types of retreats:
ACO Corp can take care of the planning of the event, as well as actually hosting the training through the use of one of ACO CORP’s strategic business partners.
The mission of the American Cooperation Organization Corporation of Corporate Retreat Professionals is to provide companies with the highest level of event planning.
We exist to attract and maintain customers. When we adhere to this maxim, everything else will fall into place.
Our services will exceed the expectations of our customers.
The corporate market for event planning is steady and profitable.
For some large companies, economic downturns means cuts in training. This is only the case for shortsighted companies however.
The benchmark companies may trim down the work force during a downturn, but they do not cut funds for training.
They recognize that investments in human resources are always a good investment.
ACO Corp intends to profit nicely from this intelligent business strategy.
Additionally, even in times of economic downturn, companies still have product launches and will still need someone to organize these events.
In short, the need for corporate event planning/ hosting services rarely diminishes, it is a steadily increasing demand that ACO Corp will capitalize on with our chosen friends as Organizers for our various similar interests in the interests of others as social entrepreneurs.

American Cooperation Organizers as Corporate Retreat Professionals’ projected growth rate is over 100% through year three and will have profits as a function of sales over 11% by year three. By the beginning of year two CRP will have four employees.

This sample marketing plan was created with Marketing Plan Pro software.

Situation Analysis
ACO Corp is entering their first year of business.
Marketing will be critical to develop sufficient business to achieve profitability. The company offers high quality event planning for two specific areas, corporate training and product release events. The basic market need is for a competent service provider offering high quality event planning at a price that is cost effective relative to a company trying to plan the events themselves.

Market Summary
ACO Corp possesses good information regarding its typical customer. This includes customer needs, the general circumstances from which the needs arise, and the difficulties the customer would face if they tried to satisfy these needs themselves.
This information will be leveraged to better understand who is served, individual customers’ specific needs, better communication channels, and how CRP can satisfy those needs.

Professionalism- This is imperative as the service Aco Corp provides is, in effect, a representation of the client corporation itself.
Competitive pricing- The pricing scheme must be competitive to offer an incentive for the customer to outsource these services.
Customer service- The customer must get the sense that all of their needs are being met, regardless how small or inconsequential it may seem.
Market Trends
The market trend for event planning has seen a surge within the last four years, a response to corporations’ impetus to outsource non-essential tasks. This industry space has gotten more competitive for several reasons:

Increased demand has increased the number of competitors.
With the increase of general event planner service providers, there has also been an emergence of specialized event planners that only offer one or two types of event planning services.
The trend for outsourcing is not specific to the event planning industry, but can be seen in many industries like IT assistance, accounting, payroll, and design work.

Market Growth
In 2000, the event planning market had $453 in annual revenue. This market space is forecasted to grow at 6% for the next four years. This growth can primarily be attributed to companies tightening their focus on their core competencies and abandoning in-house support of activities that they do not excel in.
SWOT Analysis
The following SWOT analysis captures the key strengths and weaknesses within the company, and describes the opportunities and threats facing Corporate Retreat Professionals.

Strengths
Superior, specialized service offerings.
Well-trained, enthusiastic employees.
Strong relationships with complementary service providers.
Weaknesses
The concentration of a small niche of the market that will limit the potential size of the market.
The difficulty of generating awareness and visibility of the company in its first few years of operation.
The inability to rapidly scale to meet large, unexpected increases in demand.
Opportunities
A growing market of companies that are outsourcing event planning activities.
Being one of the first service providers concentrating on this specific niche.
Relatively low overhead.
Threats
A slump in the economy that could have a ripple effect on service providers.
Future competition from existing service providers competing in different but complimentary market spaces.
The inability to find qualified, high quality employees.
Competition
Currently there are three other companies that offer event planning specifically to corporations.
They, however, tend do events that are more general in scope such as parties to reward customers or employees, or events to change the company’s image. There is no company that specializes in event planning of corporate training and product release events. There are companies that offer corporate training, but these companies provide the actual training and do not do any of the actual event planning/ logistics of the entire event.
There is also no company that specializes in product release events. There are companies that do provide this service, but they do not specialize in it.
Because event planning is a tight market, ACO Corp will benefit from specialization.

The buying pattern for the larger corporations was, in the past, to have an in-house solution. This pattern is disappearing in favor of outsourcing as there is the constant drive for gains in efficiency, something outsourcing can offer.
Service Offering
ACO Corp will offer event planning for the corporate market.
ACO Corp will concentrate on two types of event planning: Corporate Retreats ad Product Launches
1. Corporate retreats-

These events are typically used for two different reasons. They are either leadership training or team building training where employees of the corporations are sent to develop these skills.
In addition to the planning of the events, ACO CORP will be able to host the event as well. While ACO CORP’s core competencies are not in hosting, ACO CORP will align itself with a well-respected host of leadership development/ teaming skills programs and have them assist ACO CORP in the hosting aspect.
Using a strategic partner in this case allows ACO CORP to stick with a narrow focus but still offer the service to our customers.
1. Product launches-

These are events where the corporation is releasing a product and they have an event that is open to people outside of the corporation, such as industry press, distribution partners, or current key customers.
The purpose of the product launch event is to create visibility for the new release.
Keys to Success
The keys to success are:
2. Generate repeat business.
3. Achieve sufficient market visibility.
4. Accomplish benchmarked customer service.
5. Critical Issues
ACO CORP is still in the speculative stages as a start- up organization.
It faces the following critical issues:

• Continue to take a modest approach toward expansion, expanding not for the sake of expansion in itself, but because it is necessary to meet the needs of their customers.
• Establish ACO CORP as the premier niche event planner of the Spiritual Network of Ascension Age for sustainability in the Global Community corporate market.

Event Planning Marketing Plan
Corporate Retreat Professionals
This sample marketing plan was created with Marketing Plan Pro software.
Marketing Strategy
American Cooperation Organizers Corporate Retreat Professionals will be aggressively courting companies to win future contracts.
ACO OCRP will offer a superior service at a lower cost due to specialization.
By concentrating on a few specific services, ACO CORP will become proficient at these services and perform the services better than someone without the same level of expertise.
ACO CORP will increase company visibility through a website, local Chamber of Commerce networking, and participation in trade shows.
The website will be quite detailed and provide a visitor in-depth information about the services ACO CORP offers, the corresponding high level of quality, and the cost savings that can be achieved by using ACO CORP.
ACO CORP will also be quite active in the local Chambers of Commerce in the Seattle metropolitan area.
Over the years ACO CORP founder Theresa J Morris has come to realize that a lot of business transacts through the Chamber of Commerce or relationships that were started through this organization.
Lastly, ACO CORP will be active in the many trade shows that come throughout the USA before going global.
The use of trade shows allows members of ACO CORP to make initial contacts with a wide range of businesses that would otherwise be difficult to approach.
Mission
The mission of the ACO Corp Corporate Retreat Professionals is to provide companies with the highest level of event planning.
We exist to attract and maintain customers.
When we adhere to this maxim, everything else will fall into place.
Our services will exceed the expectations of our customers.
Marketing Objectives
Increase repeat customers by 7% per quarter.
Decrease customer acquisition costs by 8% per year.
Generate increased awareness of services offered, quantified by a 2% quarterly increase of unsolicited service requests.
Financial Objectives
Profitability by year three.
Maintain steady, monthly growth.
Decrease training and production costs.
Target Markets
ACO CORP is providing services to corporate customers only.
We will not be going after the “social event market” which is an alternative market niche within the event planning industry.
The corporate customer is a company that contracts with ACO CORP to plan and typically host an event for the company.
Corporations will be turning to ACO CORP to plan the events because:
It is cost efficient for a third party to plan the event.
This is the case because the third party only does event planning so they can plan and host the event more efficiently.
The company does not have additional people who can be taken away from their daily jobs, nor time to invest in an infrequent event.
Our event planning services for corporate retreats will typically be utilized by larger corporation’s especially nonprofit corporations with a low budge threshold.
A larger company can be generally defined as one with more than 40 employees.
Smaller companies sometimes will utilize this service of ours; however, it is the larger corporations that typically have the budget for this activity.
For our product launch event planning, we will be servicing companies of all different sizes.
Typically the companies that use this service will be product based companies, but we will also offer these service to service-based companies who desire to announce a new service that they are offering.
Positioning
ACO CORP will position itself as a niche service event planner serving the USA corporate market first before offering our services to the global community due to the executive expense of travel when we can utilize our hour as base on the computers and utilizing cyberspace management for our administrative costs of organization… The Seattle market will recognize the value that CRP provides with its specialized services.
ACO CORP will leverage its competitive edge to achieve the desired positioning.
ACO CORP’s competitive edge will be based on two factors, specialization and strategic relationships.
ACO CORP will be specializing in two distinct areas of corporate planning.
While specializing essentially precludes ACO CORP participating in some other market niches, it allows the company to excel in serving its chosen markets
The expert knowledge allows ACO CORP to provide the service as a cost saving to the client company because it can concentrate on improving the current offerings.
Improvements that ACO CORP strives for are a reduction in cost charged to the client and an improvement to the level of services offered.
ACO CORP’s second competitive edge is based on the use of strategic relationships.
Theresa Janette fondly called TJ for efficiency in digital usage clearly realizes that she and her staff cannot be good at everything.
Therefore, ACO CORP believes it is better to concentrate on a few things, excel in those areas, and form strategic partnerships with companies that excel in the service areas that ACO CORP doesn’t.
Applying this philosophy, TJ has decided that in addition to planning corporate retreat training sessions, she wants ACO CORP to offer the service of hosting/ leading these events as well.
The service of hosting/ leading is quite different than planning and ACO CORP believes that it would be more cost effective to form a strategic relationship with an expert in this field instead of trying to become proficient in-house.
ACO CORP then is able to offer a top notch service offering of hosting/ leading the training seminars but does not have to invest heavily in developing the programs.
Strategy Pyramids
The single objective is to position ACO CORP as the premier niche event planner serving the corporate market.
The marketing strategy will seek to create customer awareness regarding the services offered, develop the customer base, and work toward building customer loyalty and referrals.
This objective will be communicated using several different methods.
• This first method will be through the use of CRP’s website. The website will be a rich source of information detailing services offered, previous customers, examples of their work, etc.
• The second method of communication will be through networking with Chambers of Commerce. The networking activities will be important and fruitful as a significant amount of business gets conducted through the Chamber of Commerce. By being an active member of the Chamber as well as networking with other members, a lot of business will be derived from these relationships.
• The last method of communication will be through participation at various trade shows. Trade shows are an excellent venue for generating awareness of the company because most or all of the participants at a trade show are there because they are seeking information. Participation at several of the larger trade shows will be an excellent source for contacts at prospective companies.
Marketing Mix
ACO CORP’s marketing mix is comprised of the following approaches to pricing, distribution, advertising and promotion, and customer service.
• Pricing- The pricing scheme will be based on a per project estimate tailored to each customer.
• Distribution- ACO CORP’s services can be performed throughout the North American regional area, determined by the needs of the customer. At present we are concentrating on USA, Canada, and Mexico. We also include the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation and the European Economic Cooperation.
• Advertising and Promotion- Several forms of advertising and promotion will be used including a website, partnerships/ networking with the Chambers of Commerce, and participation at various tradeshows.
• Customer Service- the Company goes about the day-to-day operations with the belief that 100% customer satisfaction is required in order to make the business a success. All levels of the organization have been taught this and practice it.
Marketing Research
The main source of marketing research that ACO CORP used to validate and improve their marketing plan was a comprehensive questionnaire that was administered via email.
By using email as the method of delivery ACO CORP was able to send out far more questionnaires for the same amount of money than if they were to use more traditional, labor intensive methods, and received more responses with a faster response time.
The questionnaire was comprised of 75 different questions with each question having four possible answers to choose from. The questionnaire was designed to elicit information regarding customer preferences, the different types of outsourced activities companies typically use, as well as to test assumptions held by the founders regarding the perspective market. The survey was constructed by a Statistics graduate student from the University of Washington and was heavily tested to ensure valid, significant, relevant results. A total of 300 questionnaires were sent out with a return rate of 31%. This return rate is far better than a traditional survey. The main factor in this extraordinary return rate is that the participants were friends or acquaintances of the CRP or someone connected to CRP, and the participants were given a heads-up to prepare them for answering the upcoming survey.
Strategic Alliances
ACO Corp Corporate Retreat Professionals will develop a group of strategic alliances to enhance its service offerings. The first two will be:
1st-At-The-Top ACO CORP will depend upon its website for marketing promotion and client proposal development.
A clean, easy to navigate website is essential for e-commerce.
But first a customer has to find the website. Listings with the large search engine data bases and subsequent placement in search results displays are a mystery to most people.
In reality, it requires skilled specialized work to get a website out where customers will find it.
ACO OCRP will utilize the expert services TJ Morris Publishing Internet and E-commerce Consultants to build their website and position it on the Internet.
Innovative Learning Group committees of Organizers who have come together in 2012 at ACO CORP are negotiating with the corporate trainers as an Innovative Learning Group to provide the program content and facilitation of the leadership and team training seminar.
ACO CORP will plan for its corporate clients.
Additional host/presentation/service provider alliances will be built, allowing ACO CORP to offer complete start-to-finish event planning and implementation.

Event Planning Marketing Plan
Corporate Retreat Professionals
This sample marketing plan was created with Marketing Plan Pro software.
Financials
This section will offer a financial overview of ACO Corp Corporate Retreat Professionals as it relates to the marketing activities.
ACO CORP will address break-even analysis, sales forecasts, and how they link to the marketing strategy.
Break-even Analysis
The Break-even Analysis indicates that $13,129 will be needed in monthly revenue to achieve the Break-even point.

Break-even Analysis 2012
Monthly Revenue Break-even $9,301

Assumptions:
Average Percent Variable Cost 5%
Estimated Monthly Fixed Cost $9,300
Sales Forecast
ACO CORP will, for the most part, be using the sale strategy of personal selling.
With his five years of consulting for larger corporations, TJ has formed relationships throughout the business community, and will leverage these relationships into an initial client base.
Once things get rolling and ACO CORP has developed some satisfied clients, TJ will be building additional relationships with her network of friends generated through the Chambers of Commerce and trade shows along with her new partner Janet Lessin of Hawaii who has taken on the Editor and Administrator position of the ACO Corp Ascension Center Network with TJ of the Ascension Center Organization.

ACO CORP ASCENSION CENTER ORGANIZATION
TJ’s spiel to prospective customers will be based on the high level of service offered and cost advantages by going with ACO CORP and the Ascension Center Organization and Ascension Center Network of Organizers.
The cost savings can be quantified and shown to the customer while the higher level of service can be guaranteed as well as communicated through testimonials from satisfied clients.
The website will be utilized as a powerful communications tool, supplying introductory information to prospective customers, providing an avenue for questions and answers, as well as presenting more specialized information such as cost estimates and event proposals.
The first month will be spent setting up the office. It is unlikely that there will be any sales activity within the first two months. During the first and second month, TJ and Janet will be developing some systems to provide a template for future event planning. Once this is set up ACO CORP should be able to process customer service requests rather easily.
The third month will see some sales activity trickle. It will not be until the fifth month that things will really kick in. During months six through 12 sales will steadily increase, and this increase should continue well into year two.

Direct Cost of Sales
2012 2013 2014
Large companies $2,938 $6,127 $6,793
Small companies $1,780 $3,273 $3,948
Subtotal Direct Cost of Sales $4,718 $9,400 $10,741
Expense Forecast
The marketing expenses are budgeted so that they are fairly high during the first quarter of operation, a strategy to develop visibility for the start-up organization. After that the expenses will ramp up during certain months to cover the costs of specific events such as different trade shows.

Marketing Expense Budget
2012 2013 2014
Website $2,100 $1,200 $1,200
Networking $2,950 $3,500 $4,000
Other $5,100 $7,000 $9,000
———— ———— ————
Total Sales and Marketing Expenses $10,150 $11,700 $14,200
Percent of Sales
Controls
The purpose of this marketing plan is to serve as a guide for the organization.
The following areas will be monitored to gauge performance:
Revenue- Both monthly as well as annual tracking for both Ascension Center Network in Hawaii and Ascension Center Organization in Kentucky, USA.
Customer satisfaction.
Margins- A relative comparison between the two types of services offered.
Percentage of new business relative to repeat customers.
Implementation
The following milestones identify the key marketing programs. It is important to accomplish each one on time and on budget. The Arizona Ascension Center Group of Organizers will be franchised to follow our implementation of administration and Executive planning. We shall franchise our efforts from there.